Good food. Homecooked in Perth

Curry Puffs

One of the snacks I grew up with was curry puffs. They weren’t always around as they are labour intensive and can be fiddly to make in the warmer months as the butter shortcrust pastry is temperature sensitive. There are recipes where a combination of water and oil pastry are used to create a flaked pastry spiral effect. I haven’t had the patience to attempt this variation and go straight for a shortcrust pastry.

Another feature of the curry puffs I make is that they include beef mince. It is nigh impossible to be able to buy a curry puff with meat in it in Perth, let alone beef mince. Often it’s potatoes with a mixture of sweet potato, peas, carrot, and once I even found cauliflower. It’s just not the same. I still remember the disappointment when I bit into my first curry puff I bought from a takeaway place. Never again. My curry puffs are bold in a meat curry flavour. There isn’t any room for sweetening or any vegetable other than potatoes. Definitely no peas.

And one other thing, I use my Thermomix. I have a TM5. It’s not necessary but boy has it made a few things much more efficient.

Filling Ingredients

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 onion peeled and halved

500g beef mince

2 tbsp. meat curry powder

500g potatoes diced into 5mm cubes

Salt and pepper to taste

Filling Method

Place the oil and onion into the Thermomix bowl. Chop for 3 seconds on speed 6. This chops the onion finely while distributing oil around the bowl.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the curry powder. Cook for 2 minutes on Varoma on Speed 1.

Add potatoes and cook for a further 3 minutes at Varoma, reverse blade, Speed 1.

Taste and add salt and pepper if needed and mix it through.

Place the filling in a mixing bowl and allow to cool completely before use. Warm filling will melt the butter in the pastry and will cause much frustration.

Shortcrust Pastry Ingredients

300g plain flour

150g butter cut into pieces

1 tsp salt

100mL chilled water

Pastry Method

Place all the ingredients into the Thermomix bowl and mix for 30-40 seconds on Speed 4.

Transfer to a clean flat surface that has been lightly floured and work into a ball.

If it’s a warm day, the pastry will become soft which will make assembling the curry puffs a nightmare and there will be tears. On warm days, I use a small pre-cooled esky or small insulated lunch bag with an ice pack to hold a bowl with the pastry in it while taking the amount of pastry that I need.

Curry Puff Assembling

Roll a golf ball sized ball of pastry into a circle with a thickness of 2-3mm.

Place a spoon of filling in the middle and bring the edges of the pastry together to form a semi-circle.

Pleat the edges.

Repeat around 29 times.

This video will help as well. I did have to practice the pleating a few times when I was younger with playdough to get the hang of it.

Deep Frying

2L vegetable oil

Method

Heat up 2L of vegetable oil for frying.

Deep fry until golden brown.

The pastry should be soft and flaky with a moist filling inside. Best eaten warm.